Donald Trump isn’t a fan of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio‘s plan to paint a Black Lives Matter tribute on Fifth Avenue. More specifically, right in front of his hotel. The President slammed the city’s plan to have the words painted on the prolific Manhattan street, calling it a “symbol of hate” in a July 1 tweet. “NYC is cutting Police $’s by ONE BILLION DOLLARS, and yet the @NYCMayor is going to paint a big, expensive, yellow Black Lives Matter sign on Fifth Avenue, denigrating this luxury Avenue,” he began his Twitter rant. “This will further antagonize New York’s Finest, who LOVE New York & vividly remember the horrible BLM chant, ‘Pigs In A Blanket, Fry ‘Em Like Bacon’. Maybe our GREAT Police, who have been neutralized and scorned by a mayor who hates & disrespects them, won’t let this symbol of hate be affixed to New York’s greatest street. Spend this money fighting crime instead!”
The announcement comes amid New York City’s latest budget proposal, which includes massive cuts from the police department’s multi-billion dollar annual allotment. “We’re taking a billion dollars out of the NYPD. We’re reducing the size of the NYPD, we’re reducing overtime, we’re moving some of the functions NYPD does now — they will be replaced by civilians handling those functions who can do them better. And we’re going to take that money and put it into youth initiatives,” Mayor de Blasio told MSNBC.
NYC is cutting Police $’s by ONE BILLION DOLLARS, and yet the @NYCMayor is going to paint a big, expensive, yellow Black Lives Matter sign on Fifth Avenue, denigrating this luxury Avenue. This will further antagonize New York’s Finest, who LOVE New York & vividly remember the….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2020
As for painting the words “Black Lives Matter” on the street — much like the mural painted near the White House in Washington DC — the Mayor said he hoped to send a message to Trump. “It’s an important message to the whole nation, and obviously we want the president to hear it because he’s never shown respect for those three words. When he hears ‘Black Lives Matter,’ he presents a horrible, negative reality of something that doesn’t exist and he misses the underlying meaning that we’re saying we have to honor the role of African Americans in our history and in our society,” de Blasio said. “We have to make it come alive today so we’re going to make it really clear to the president, it’s going to be right outside his doorstep.”
It’s been quite a day for President Trump, who also suffered an embarrassing moment on Twitter when he seemingly forgot that former Fox News boss Roger Ailes had died. Trump took to Twitter with this question: “Where are you Roger Ailes?” Well, the ex CEO is in his grave, because he died in 2017. The POTUS inquired about his friend’s whereabouts after voicing his disapproval of Fox News hiring former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile, who used to be a contributor at CNN.